You may remember a couple months ago we were talking about how people get their psychological and emotional needs met at work. I’d like to continue that conversation today and also give you a few visuals to help you have a better understanding of how to measure their engagement, and then give you some tools that will help you in understanding the behaviors of these different groups and where you, as the leader, should be spending your time to get the most out of your team.
A frequent hot topic with our clients here at Mission Squared is employee engagement. It’s something that more and more people are talking about and striving for in their businesses and leadership, and it’s also extremely frustrating for many leaders. Study after study has now shown that the more engaged employees are in their work, the better they perform and the more profitable the business is. One of the most recent studies I saw stated that even moving engagement up by 10% can result in up to 50% increase in revenue. That’s a HUGE number.
So what is ‘engagement’ anyway?
Gallup, one of the leading polling companies who reports on everything from politics to personal motivators, has done studies on employee engagement for decades. Gallup has a very simple description regarding employee engagement: I care about my work. That’s it! It’s not some long definition with a lot of caveats. It’s simply “do I care about my work.”
What Gallup has found out, and what I find interesting, is that over the last ten years, the level of engagement for employees hasn’t really changed much. Even though there’s tons of information and resources out there to increase engagement, the needle hasn’t moved. Why is that?
In order to understand this, I need to start with a visual. Many of you will remember this image from your days in school.
It’s a bell curve, and the purpose of it was to help teachers understand how the students in their class would most likely perform. On the left, you’ve got a small group who will not perform well, and are genuinely disengaged in what’s happening. In the middle, where the bulk of the people will be, is a moderately engaged group who want to see the business succeed. Finally, on the right, we’ve got the most engaged and highest performing group.
For the purposes of today, I’d like to break these three areas of the diagram into 3 groups:
The Disengaged group on the left: Goats
The engaged group in the middle: Sheep
The super engaged group on the right: Tigers
Now let’s learn a little about each group
Spotting the Signs: Goats
This is the disengaged group on the left. These are the people who have been disengaged for a while, and are likely causing some issues on the team. Yes… They could possibly even be your crap-magnets (see our previous blog on that!). They have psychological and emotional needs that have not been met by their work for quite some time, and it shows. They prefer to be left alone and have zero interest in changing. If they’re acting disengaged and aloof and have no desire to even uphold their own standards, you’re dealing with a goat.
Guiding the Willing: Sheep
This is the moderately engaged group in the middle of the bell curve. For the most part, they’re engaged in what’s happening at the office and work to do their best on a daily basis. One unique characteristic of this middle group, is they are affected greatly by what happens day-to-day at work. If they have a big win or they have a day where their needs are met, they’re happy. If they have a rough day at work, their morale is affected and maybe they are less engaged that day.
This group will vacillate back and forth, but for the most part, if their good days outnumber their bad days, they’re going to stay engaged, especially if opportunities come up for them to be recognized or have a larger number of needs met.
Driving Innovation: Tigers
This group is on the far right of this graphic. These are the high achievers and those who are 100% engaged based on their own internal motivations, and are not driven nearly as much by the ebbs and flows of business. They don’t necessarily ride the wave of ups and downs like the sheep group, and their engagement in the business is often in stark contrast to the goats, or the group at the far left.
This highly engaged group may not be the most social, and may not always spend their free time with the team outside of work, but make no mistake, if there’s a job that needs done, you can trust, with a high level of certainty, that they’ll get it done. They’re achievers who want to do well for the sake of doing well. Their internal motivation drives them to be the best.
Now that we’ve identified the groups, I’d like you to think about your team and figure out who is in each group, based on the traits from above. My suspicion is that you’ll have 1-2 in the left (goat) column, 1-2 in the right column (tigers), and the majority of people in the middle group (sheep).
So where do I spend my time and energy?
Here’s my question for you: Who should you be spending the most time with to help move the needle on engagement in your business to get the best results?
I asked this same question to a group of execs in a large group session I led a few weeks ago. Over 60% of the people in the room said the unengaged group, or as we’ve referred to them here, the goats. When I asked why, most of the responses were focused on re-engaging them to see better performance for the whole team because more people were engaged.
While I applaud their answer and their hope to re-engage this group, let’s revisit WHY these people are in this group. They’re disengaged and their psychological and emotional needs are not being met, and probably haven’t been met for some time. A lot of effort could go into trying to meet their needs to bring them back to an engaged place, but a rough day or two and it’s very possible they slip back to disengaged, and all the time, effort, and energy you put into them was lost in a matter of a couple days.
So where should your focus be?
The middle group, the ones we’ve referred to as the sheep. These people are for the most part engaged day in and day out. Although they may have their ups and downs, they are still seeing that their needs are met and because of that, they are willing to do what’s necessary to remain successful. These are the people who ride the tide of emotion for a good or bad day, and you, as the leader, have the opportunity to pour into them each day to help them remain in the middle group, or even help them find their way to being super engaged and become a tiger.
So what do you do with the disengaged?
You have to set the expectation that their behavior and being disengaged isn’t ok, and it’s affecting the team. They must be held accountable and given a short period to either step up or step out. Set the expectation, monitor their behavior, hold them accountable, and then make a decision on what to do with them. Their level of satisfaction must either change internally so they are motivated on their own to succeed, or they need to be promoted to customer and leave space for someone in one of the other groups.
A quick note on here regarding the highly engaged tigers and the unengaged goats. Don’t drag out decisions on goats. The tigers don’t like the goats. They’re annoyed and frustrated by their lack of engagement and lower quality work. Furthermore, the longer you keep around the unengaged goats, the more likely you’ll lose a highly engaged tiger to a place with fewer or no goats. Be decisive… It’s why you’re in the position you’re in as leader.
At Mission Squared, we work with leaders and their teams to help increase engagement, improve morale, and help you achieve a culture that helps your business grow. We’ve worked with many companies to help improve the middle group to create higher levels of engagement, increase revenue, and even help your middle group of engaged people become part of the highly motivated tigers.